Nvidia in Talks to Backstop $250 Billion of OpenAI's Ohio Data-Center Financing
- Nvidia is negotiating a roughly $250 billion financing guarantee to help OpenAI lease a 10-gigawatt, $500 billion-plus AI campus SoftBank is developing in Piketon, Ohio, the WSJ reported over the weekend; Bloomberg, Reuters and CNBC confirmed.
- The deal would cover OpenAI's lease and construction debt — but not the Nvidia chips inside the facility — and Nvidia is separately discussing up to $350 billion of financing for OpenAI chip purchases, sources told the WSJ.
- The structure highlights that OpenAI, projecting ~$14B of 2026 losses on ~$25B in revenue and lacking an investment-grade rating, can't tap conventional debt markets at this scale; Nvidia's credit standing effectively substitutes for that rating, raising fresh questions about circular AI financing.